US elementary school teacher arrested for sexual abuse of 19 children

An American elementary school teacher has been detained near Los Angeles for allegedly committing sexual abuse and lewd acts involving 19 children.
Prosecutors filed 15 charges against 57-year-old teacher Robert Pimental on Wednesday involving 12 victims while police detectives note that he has also abused seven more children and an adult for which no charges have yet been filed, The Los Angeles Times reports Thursday.
Pimental, a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) fourth grade teacher, is accused of "committing lewd acts and continual sexual abuse [fondling] of numerous students," the report states, quoting Los Angele Police Capt. Fabian Lizzaraga.
The allegations, it adds, date back to March 2012, when LAUSD officials replaced principal of the elementary school where Pimental worked as it opened a probe into alleged sexual misconduct by what they would only refer to as a “male teacher.”
According to the report, the case is one “of the most serious” sexual abuse cases at a LAUSD elementary school since a similar case last year involving a teacher at the school district’s Miramonte Elementary.
“Former Miramonte teacher Mark Berndt, 61, faces 23 counts of lewd conduct and is being held in lieu of $23-million bail,” the paper adds.
Berndt, according to the daily, has been accused of “spoon-feeding his semen to blindfolded children as part of what he allegedly called a tasting game.”
Moreover, he has allegedly placed cockroaches on children's faces “and feeding them semen-tainted cookies at the school.”
The development comes following recent news reports about sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests over numerous years in California and by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish counselor in New York.
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